Transform Your Teaching

What impact can familiar and unfamiliar music have on students in teaching? Do beats per minute correlate to cognition? Join Rob and Jared as they reflect on their interview with Dr. Deforia Lane and discuss the usage of music in education.

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What is Transform Your Teaching?

The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.

Narrator:

This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.

Ryan:

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles continue our series called Have You Tried? By talking about music as a tool.

Ryan:

Thanks for joining us.

Jared:

Welcome back, Rob, to the series Have You Tried? And we are exploring music Yep. As a way of delivering content, helping students latch onto content. Although we haven't discussed assessment. I feel like assessment is something maybe we could explore in this episode as well.

Jared:

But we just finished recording with Doctor. Duforia Lane.

Rob:

Right.

Jared:

What an incredible interview that was.

Rob:

That was a whole new world.

Jared:

It was completely brand new. And we just wanna take some time to reflect and talk about what she said and how we could just reflect on that and how it can apply to the classroom in some way.

Rob:

Yeah. It seemed like a new fantastic point of view. Oh, yeah. You know? And she kinda helped point us in the right direction.

Rob:

And one of the things that she put forward to us, but kinda like almost out of the gate, was beats per minute. Yeah. I mean, you and I are both musicians.

Jared:

I've played instruments.

Rob:

Same here. Yeah. Dabbled in singing.

Jared:

Yeah. A little.

Rob:

You know?

Jared:

I won't do it now, but, yes, I have in the past.

Rob:

And we're

Jared:

aware of timing. Oh, yeah. It's what keeps music literally going is having rhythm and beats per minute. Yeah. And it's obvious when

Rob:

that changes. Especially when a drummer can't seem to keep time.

Jared:

Yes. That is correct.

Rob:

That's that's yeah. Anyway, I digress. My point, Jared Mhmm. I did not understand until we were talking with doctor Lane that, you know, there were ranges that actually helped the brain Mhmm. Do different things.

Rob:

And so she's like, if you wanna bring your blood pressure down, if you want to focus 60 to 80 beats per minute, I believe is what she had to say. Mhmm. So I started toying with that. I did that in my class. Oh.

Rob:

So I used Suno to make two different songs. K. One was, like I think it was, like, a 125 beat per minute techno song. Didn't have any lyrics. No lyrics.

Rob:

It just was, you know, Right. And I played that as one of my classes came in.

Jared:

K.

Rob:

K? And I noticed immediately, very talkative. They were all chitchatting. You know, I actually had to ask them to stop. It's first time teaching my class where I actually had to ask students to stop talking.

Rob:

Oh, wow.

Jared:

Yeah. And you think it's because of the music?

Rob:

Well, it was out of the norm for them.

Jared:

Okay.

Rob:

You know, I've never used that kind of music when they're coming in. I've used worship music. I've used slower lo fi music, you know, like concentration. Yep. And this time, that particular class just chattered up a storm.

Rob:

But the thing that was interesting is I always do kind of like a recall quiz through Mentimeter. Like, I ask questions, just have them recall facts.

Jared:

At the beginning of class?

Rob:

At the beginning of class. Okay. Could take anywhere from, you know, five to fifteen minutes depending on how much I'm asking them because I continually am drilling different things that we've gone over in the past. And so making them recall that. Okay.

Rob:

And so they're reading the questions, but they're not reading the questions. They're going on autopilot, and they didn't they they were answering questions that I didn't ask. They didn't they didn't actually read clearly. It was almost like they just skimmed over it.

Jared:

Oh, so they, like, rushed through it almost.

Rob:

Right. Right. And it wasn't just one or two. It was a vast majority of them. Interesting.

Rob:

Who had earlier in the week not done that. I thought that was very interesting. And then I the next section that came in, I did the 60 to 80 beats per minute kind of thing. Yeah. Didn't have those problems.

Rob:

They didn't exhibit any of those things. They were very much in tune. They answered the questions. The error rate was considerably less from from the class before. And usually, they're they're they're basically neck and neck because I've been doing this pretty much from the second or third, you know, class session.

Rob:

So we're now in, I think, the thirteenth class session this week as of this recording. And so I did that in session 10. So I already had a good baseline. Like, I have Mentimeter, you know, their responses and everything.

Jared:

And Right.

Rob:

In Mentimeter.

Jared:

So you could track.

Rob:

Yeah. So I can I can actually track the data? And, you know, I was looking back at it and then looking at that one that I did on on the tenth session, I was like, oh, wow. That's quite the change. All that to say, I personally experienced, I think, anecdotally, but still, the effect of music on my students.

Jared:

Interesting. I would wonder if you were to do you do breaks? Or you you guys for fifty minutes I don't

Rob:

have time for breaks.

Jared:

Yeah. See, do a break in mine because mine's an hour and fifteen. I wonder if to test your idea of try at least trying to get them under control with a faster BPM music. I wonder if I were to do like 60 to 80 before the break, like the entire time before the break and then start the fashion music at the break.

Rob:

And then give them And have a

Jared:

them keep going. And number one, see if I can get them to settle down without, stopping the music or getting there having do what you do, which probably gets their attention several times. And then maybe give them a quiz based on what we covered in the first part of the lecture before the break.

Rob:

Oh, that would be good. It has to be completely recall, though.

Jared:

Yeah. Just exactly what was done in the first part of the class. Yeah. I'll have to try that.

Rob:

I'd be interested to see what you find.

Jared:

I feel like I wouldn't be able to test it right away because I don't use music in my class at all. So that would be

Rob:

kind of a curveball for

Jared:

you? It would be an immediate curveball. So I feel like if I were to start now and then maybe try it at the end of the semester, that would be But I think it, again, it would be an interesting finding or it could be related to something brand new. And so that's, that's what I would wonder. I would have you do that for the next three weeks and figure out if you could track the data if this remains to be true.

Rob:

Yeah. The next step is to use some of these lo fi songs that I had Suno create that are 60 beats per minute.

Jared:

Right.

Rob:

And and just now when I've put those on, students seem to be, like, okay with them.

Jared:

Mhmm.

Rob:

There are some that are probably too far out, like the one that I made with Egyptian folk music was too far. I think it it really distracted them. Yeah. The one that seemed to work the best was the American folk music style that I had Suno create that was lo fi. Everybody just kind of it just disappeared in the background.

Jared:

You think it's because they're used to it, because of the culture?

Rob:

It could be. Some of the tones and everything were familiar. Mhmm. But they were there were no lyrics. Right?

Rob:

So there's no lyrics, and I think the tones and the music the musicality and the instrumentation were familiar.

Jared:

Okay. So that's what I'm wondering too because there are different scales, musical scales, like major and minor scales based on culture. Mhmm. I wonder if the music that Suno creates is strictly, like, for example, you mentioned Egyptian folk. I wonder if it's just Egyptian folk instruments or if it's also the major and minor scales that are relative to that type of music or if it's just the quote, unquote, Americanized major and minor scales.

Rob:

No. When it did the Egyptian style, it was definitely the minor scale.

Jared:

Well, what I'm

Rob:

saying though to you and I would sound Like a minor scale.

Jared:

Yes. But you said you wanted to be in major scale for it to be Egypt under Egypt. I wondered how granular did you have your prompts be for that?

Rob:

I told it that it needed to be, the prompts that I had for each one were to make the scales appropriate to

Jared:

Oh, you did specifically. Okay.

Rob:

So each one had its own so the American was pentatonic. Right? Sure. Yeah. Pentatonic major.

Rob:

So

Jared:

it Mhmm. Five notes, baby. Right. All day. Yeah.

Jared:

Give me that guitar, and I will play a solo Mhmm. For six days using the pentatonic scale.

Rob:

Give me give me that g good old GCD. Anyway.

Jared:

I also wonder, like, the rhythm idea, you know, they say that your heart beats at a 120 beats per minute.

Rob:

Mhmm. I

Jared:

wonder if there's some correlation there with, like, activity and meeting that same BPM makes you I would think so. Makes you feel more active as well. I wonder that as well. You mentioned musical styles already, but I wonder something that Doctor. Lane talked about was the idea that picking music that students aren't familiar with, be it She was talking more like music they know as far as the words, but I wonder also if the Egyptian folk was just way too

Rob:

I think so.

Narrator:

Out

Jared:

where it's good to pick different types of music, but maybe maybe not so far off

Rob:

Well, I think sticks out. It has yeah. It has to be different enough so that you're not singing along Yeah. Or even the tune. Like, if I'd have done something, let's say, with Jesus Loves Me or Amazing Grace

Jared:

Yep.

Rob:

I don't think those songs would have been able to disappear into the background. Right? Yeah. Students would have probably been singing them in their heads Right. Which takes focus.

Rob:

So it seems to me that it has to be close enough to something that you're used to, not so close that you can start singing to it. And then it I think on the other side, it has to be it can't be so far away, like, in terms of what you're used to Sure. Scale wise or, you know

Jared:

I'm just sitting here thinking, like, there's an element where, at least for me anyway, music that I'm familiar with makes me feel more comfortable and at ease.

Rob:

Even with lyrics? Like, so do you study with music that you can sing to?

Jared:

I can't study what's weird is that okay. My brain I I discovered a lot about my brain during my dissertation. My brain is messed up, I think. That was a joke, but you're not laughing. So it makes you feel like it's serious.

Rob:

No. I'm I'm laughing on the inside.

Jared:

That's not makes it not funny. What I'm what I'm saying though is that so the the best way that I if I wanted to focus, I would either do lo fi Yeah. Hip hop Or I found this soundscape that was using Windows 95 sounds, like the startup and other different sounds, but it was like a it was a synthesizer, a certain frequency that I went into a zone. That's what I use at work now if I need to get into focus mode. But what I also really write to and focus to is episodes of TV shows that I've seen so many times that I could probably recite.

Rob:

Really?

Jared:

Yeah. And it was just in the background. And especially if I could find episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3,000 with the commercials from the nineties, like the actual broadcast episodes that went onto comedy, The Comedy Channel or SciFi. If I could find those, I could get into a zone like you would not believe. So my going back to my original point about comfort level with music.

Jared:

I wonder if playing music that's slightly unknown to students, so they don't know, does it put them on edge? Because it puts me on edge.

Rob:

It could.

Jared:

You know, maybe you don't want them to feel comfortable in learning, which is weird to say.

Rob:

Well, I think that is something that doctor Lane talked about. Right? She's like, it has to be something that the listener expects. So she went right back to the very thing we've heard about storytelling. You know, we've heard it from doctor Schultz.

Rob:

We've heard it from some so many others. There has to be a point of connection, and you have to listen to your students. Right? You have to get to know them in order to know what they like, what they dislike. And I would say music most certainly has you know, each one of us has our own likes and dislikes.

Rob:

Sure. In terms of music.

Jared:

Sure. Yeah.

Rob:

There are very few who are very eclectic in terms of music. And, I mean, even those that are still, you know, we have preferences.

Jared:

Mhmm.

Rob:

Right? So, you know, listening to tense jazz might not be somebody's favorite because of the dissonance, especially if it's highly dissonant. Right? There's not a lot of resolve.

Jared:

Mhmm.

Rob:

But if you're listening to something like smooth jazz Yeah. And it's in the background like, for me, I like that for focusing. I also like lo fi for focusing. There are certain classical pieces that I love for focusing. Mhmm.

Rob:

Anything from Bach, sometimes Beethoven, Mozart most certainly. I kinda, like, loved Mozart when I was a student in college anyway and in high school, to be honest. I think it was the the rhythmic things that that I could I could hear and I could anticipate, and it kinda just went into the background. And so my brain was spinning, but at the same time, also connecting to the information that I was I was studying or even listening to.

Jared:

Sure.

Rob:

So I do wonder for those listening, what have they tried? Yeah. Maybe we have folks who are using music a lot more than we've even thought of. Sure. Love to hear from some of our listeners.

Jared:

Yeah.

Rob:

But I'm also thinking, you know, if you didn't listen to our podcast with doctor Lane, go back, listen to it, and see if there's something there that maybe you can grab that might you might find helpful or beneficial for your students.

Jared:

Yeah. I haven't used it that much. The only times I've really directed it, I would I would use it whenever we talked about setting in literature, and we would go through and talk about how music how musical score can set the mood in a movie. Oh, yeah. And if you change the musical score, the the scene changes.

Jared:

Like, there's some great examples on YouTube where people have changed the music of movie trailers. And when you change the music, it totally changes. Like, if you make it like a supposed to be like a really tense horror movie trailer and you make like comical funny music, it totally changes the the feel of it. I would do sustained silent reading, once a week in my class, and I would play music in the background. And, it would just be a Spotify playlist that I that I made.

Jared:

And there were some points where I would use music that some of them would recognize. Like, I would use the the Skyrim soundtrack every now and then. And whenever something and I wouldn't tell them, but every now and then you would I'd watch my students and, like, they'd be nose deep in a book and their head just kinda raises and an eyebrow slowly goes up, and I'm like, yeah. And they're like, okay. And they go back.

Jared:

Or I'd use Godzilla or I would use there is a whole play playlist and artists on Spotify that take hip hop, current hip hop songs and turn them into lullabies, like baby lullabies. And so all of a sudden they would be like listening to this music, a lullaby, and all of a sudden, it's a Q tip song. They didn't realize it was playing and stuff like that. So yeah. But I I haven't really used it in my higher ed class.

Jared:

A former colleague of mine would use it constantly. He would always have a Bluetooth speaker in the background playing music

Rob:

Really?

Jared:

Because he believed that it helped with the cognitive development of his students.

Rob:

I did appreciate also the things that doctor Lane talked about in terms of the physical and the kinesthetic rhythms to help the brain unlock. And I've seen that when I've had my classes go through free writing. So

Jared:

Yeah.

Rob:

Yeah. I always take him through at least one iteration of that, and I know you dislike free writing. But

Jared:

Look. I know I've touched It's true. I don't dislike it. It doesn't work for me.

Rob:

I have found that lo fi, whether it's I don't know if it's hip hop. I don't know what it is. I just Apple Music has a it has a playlist for lo fi concentration.

Jared:

Okay.

Rob:

And if I play that, it just, you know, just enough so you can hear it in the background. Not too loud, but

Jared:

Mhmm.

Rob:

It's just sitting there. You can hear it.

Jared:

I just realized

Rob:

that was thinking. Then I do timing. With the free writing, inevitably, students just they're just zoned in. And some of the feedback that I get is, we actually wish you'd let us go longer. Because usually, I'm only, like, doing three minutes.

Rob:

Sure. Because I don't I don't have that much time in a fifty minute, you know, spot to try to put it all in. But for those who really were energized by it and had a lot coming out, it was very frustrating for them to stop. Interesting. Because it was like they got their mind on a train because I talked to him, like, so what he just like the music, the ideas, everything just started coming.

Jared:

And

Rob:

they were in a flow, and they didn't wanna they didn't wanna come out of the flow, and my stopping them brought them out of the flow, and they were that frustrated them.

Jared:

Interesting. What I was saying earlier that came to me as you were speaking is that I just realized that when I'm driving, for me to focus the most, I put music on and I turn it low enough where I can't really make out the lyrics, but I can hear the beat and the rhythm. That's something I subconsciously do without even realizing it, but it does help me focus. I wonder if I did that for free writing if I'd actually want to keep doing it and enjoy it. Maybe it maybe it's the silence of free writing that I don't like.

Jared:

Maybe if I add something in the background, it would help. Yeah. I don't know. Because I do want to like it. I just can't.

Rob:

I think there's a there's a whole lot more we could talk about here

Jared:

Oh, yeah.

Rob:

In terms of music, how the brain responds to it. Did you have any other things? Like, the beats per minute was the one that, like, really came out to me. Was there anything you wanted to talk about?

Jared:

The the thing that hit me the most we already talked about was the idea that, like, playing music they they're not familiar with.

Rob:

Okay.

Jared:

Which yeah. That's just a totally different concept for me. It's something I didn't consider. Because like I said, like, to me, I find comfort in music that I know, but I can't work or I can't focus with music that I know at the same as long as it has lyrics. That's why I like doing, like I said, the lo fi hip hop or things that I don't things that I can't predict in a like I've never heard it before kind of a way.

Jared:

Like I understand, like, the the chord progression usually for that stuff. Mhmm. And the beat is going to be the same with lo fi hip hop. Mhmm. But I I don't anticipate what's coming next.

Jared:

So

Rob:

Yeah.

Jared:

I think that's a big part of it as well.

Rob:

I think for future, I'd be interested for our listeners and anyone else who wants to try this, is to get on Suno and think of ways to create background music for your students.

Jared:

Yeah. I think it's a really cool idea.

Rob:

And try it. I mean, I think it's a good way to get from theory to testing just just to see how do my students react. Does it help them? Get some feedback from them. You know?

Jared:

Know your students. Know your students. Come back to in this podcast is know your students, how to serve your students best. Well, we're going to explore mind mapping in our next episode.

Rob:

Looking forward to that.

Jared:

It's something that you and I are both big fans of, probably for different ways, but yeah, mind mapping is up next on the

Ryan:

Have You Tried? Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or comments about our reflections on music as a tool, feel free to reach out to us at CTLPodcastcedarville dot edu, or you can connect with us on LinkedIn. Also, don't forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.